Did you know that most people read at an average rate of 250 words per minute? Some people may be naturally quicker than others, but speed reading is something you can hone and master like every skill. Take Evelyn Wood, someone we’ll be talking about later, who claimed she could read 2,700 words per minute.
Stop and think about this for a minute. Do you want to be like her? Or be like her students, one of whom went on TV and said she could read “Gone with the Wind,” a 689-page book in just one hour. Good! You’re in the right place.
The definition of speed reading is this: the process of recognizing and absorbing sentences on a page all at once instead of just identifying individual words.
Now, are you ready to leave all the slow readers in the dust behind you? Let’s get started!
Know What You Want
Is this popular method effective, or is it lazy? Let’s find out.
Many speed reading experts and self-help books advise aspiring speed-readers to know what they want to get out from a text before they get into it. This seems like a given, but here’s why this method works.
When you’ve mentally prepared yourself, your eyes set on the metaphorical goal, you give yourself freedom and permission to allow some comprehension loss. This is because you’re actively looking for words and lines that are related.
The flaw with this method is that people don’t know what they want from the text off the top of their head. If you’re reading a fiction book or if your goal is for entertainment, you can’t have a set “mission objective.” No, this works for the more “bland” type of text that is better taken in at a quicker rate to save time for something else.
Under the umbrella of knowing what you want out of a text, a word of advice is to skim or preview the text before you read it all together. This allows you to know which parts you want to focus on and which ones you want to ignore entirely.
Previewing content boxes, titles, names, numbers, images, or excerpts are a great way to get a feeling for the text and what you want out of it. So next time you read a non-fiction book, try to read the first three or six sentences to give yourself a hint at what lies ahead.
When you answer what you want from this text, and you know the overall content of the chapters, you can skip through what doesn’t matter. This could mean entire sections, paragraphs, or even pages.
Subvocalization
Is subvocalization speed-readers’ arch-nemesis, or is it their saving grace? There are some mixed opinions about sub vocalizations.
A lot of speed reaching techniques call for avoiding pronunciation and “hearing” the words you’re reading in your head as you read them. This is called “subvocalization.”
And those who call for eliminating it tell you to skim through the lines and groups of words so that you’ll be able to comprehend words faster than you can say them. Now, is this true? And more importantly, is it efficient?
We see that subvocalization is necessary for reading well and reading quickly. Those who tell you that the expert speed readers, the ones who claim to read over 900 words per minute, don’t do it may be skimming the truth, as we say in speed-reading lingo.
Speed readers do subvocalize. They do it at a faster rate than untrained readers do. It comes down to it being impossible to comprehend what you are reading without using that internal monolog and that inner voice you have. If you want to learn how to read dramatically faster, don’t eliminate this inner voice. Train it alongside you.
People diss subvocalization because, admittedly, it does slow down your process when you stumble upon unfamiliar words. But that isn’t the method’s fault. If you want to be a speed-reading vamp, you need to recognize words or learn to skip them, as our next method will advise you.
Read in Chunks
This next method is aimed at minimizing the frequency of eye fixations per line. Ideally, you want to read a text with your eyes focused on only the middle of the line while you’re still able to comprehend the entire sentence.
When you read, it won’t be word by word, which is incredibly time-consuming. No, it will be chunk by chunk or by block. You’re jumping between blocks, which are made up of words you can read in the snap of a finger. This urges you to depend on using your peripheral vision. And bam! You have just minimized your reading time.
Now, here begs the question: how effective is this method? On a scale of fluency to our number one tip, we would say this lies somewhere in between.
Read More
Next up, we have the simplest, most popular, and the most common method proposed, and it is to “read more.”
This isn’t just a case of “practice makes perfect.” We’re trying to get your fluency up. This works even in your native language. You’re bound to stumble upon an unfamiliar term that will make you slow down your reading speed to try to make sense of it. So this goes for technical documents and whichever kind of text that contains jargon and lingo.
To overcome this issue and improve your fluency, focus on reading a specific type of text so that you’ll be able to recognize these words faster, and thus, read better and achieve your goal of reading quickly.
Eliminate Regression
Off the top of your head, what do you think– without a single doubt– makes reading a text go a lot slower than it should?
Rereading it or back-skipping every few lines. This is one of the common mistakes readers make that take up a lot of time without them knowing or realizing what they’re doing. It’s natural to want to skip back and reread a word or a sentence to make sure you’ve got the meaning right.
Regression is the conscious rereading and back-skipping over lines. Regression dramatically increases your reading speed– as in it takes up to 30% of your reading time. It also causes you to subvocalize the information you’ve always read. Now, imagine all the mind borders we can knock down if we eliminate Regression.
The most popular method to discourage Regression is to underline the words as you read them or to– and this is our favorite– cover the text with a blank paper so that there’s no option for going back.
The Pointer Method
And the last and most popular tip– and arguably the most effective– is the Pointer Method. It’s also called “meta guiding” or “hand pacing.”
This method wasn’t “pointed” out by just anyone. This is the gospel that speed reading pioneer Evelyn Nielson Wood, a Utah school teacher employed in the 1950s. Wood claimed she could 2,7000 words per minute if she traced a finger along the line as she read. She also read down the page instead of reading from left to right.
Let’s give this a whirl ourselves. You’ve got a pen, the cap off, of course– or use your finger as a pointer, but we find that pens are more efficient. Now, track each line as you read it, underlining it while keeping your gaze above the tip of the pen. If you want to underline the words, that’s totally up to you. We want to improve your focus on the words and increase your speed at taking in the lines.
You’re supposed to not spend over one second on each line. With each passing page, increase that speed. Here’s the real talk. This method is dramatically effective, but there are bumps to it. In the beginning, you probably won’t be able to hold a lot of information. But as you practice and grow more comfortable with this breakneck-speed method, your brain will catch up.
This may also be drawing upon all the techniques we just learned, but you should try not to move your eyes backward or reread. Think of the pen as a leader. It doesn’t go back, and neither should your eyes. And hey, when you’re trying out this speed reading method, it’s imperative that you don’t fixate your pen or your eyes on the first or last words.
There’s a reason why this technique is the most popular. It’s the most effective!
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